Keystone pipeline: Brad Wall lobbies Barack Obama to approve project

On the eve of U.S. president Barack Obama’s second-term inauguration, Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall is leading a campaign to score swift approval for the Keystone XL pipeline, along with ten other American state governors.

Mr. Wall sent a letter to the president on Thursday, noting the line is crucial to U.S. energy security.

“With the Keystone XL Pipeline, U.S. Imports from Canada, a democratic friend and ally, could reach 4 million barrels a day by 2020, twice what is currently imported from the Persian Gulf,” the letter reads.

The governors of Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, Wyoming, Utah and North and South Dakota also signed the missive in support of the pipeline.

TransCanada’s Keystone XL, which would ship oilsands bitumen from Alberta to the Gulf coast, became a partisan hot potato after a massive environmental campaign managed to turn progressive opinion against both the pipeline and the oilsands more generally.

The western provinces are in dire need of the line’s approval; the Alberta provincial government, for example, is facing a projected deficit of up to $3 billion due to a dramatic slide in oil royalties. The province’s bitumen is selling at well below world price, largely because of bottlenecks and backlogs in the region’s pipeline infrastructure.

The price drop affects oil coming out of Saskatchewan as well, but the Alberta premier’s signature was notably absent from Mr. Wall’s letter.

Also missing was the signature of the governor of Nebraska, Dave Heineman. TransCanada’s original route envisioned Keystone XL passing through an environmentally sensitive region in that state known as the Sandhills. The line would also run through the Ogallala aquifer system, which provides about a third of the country’s groundwater for irrigation.

TransCanada submitted plans for an alternate route last September. At the time, the company told Reuters that it was hoping for presidential approval in early 2013.

“Mr. President,” Mr. Wall wrote, we consider the Keystone XL Pipeline fundamentally important to the future economic prosperity of both the United States and Canada. We strongly urge you to issue a Presidential Permit and act swiftly to approve [it].”